The Race

Michigan's 7th congressional district is the kind of seat that decides House majorities, and it gets its first real test of the cycle on Tuesday, Aug. 4. Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI) drew no primary challenger, so all the action is on the Democratic side, where three candidates are running for the right to face him on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Barrett won the seat in 2024 by beating former state Sen. Curtis Hertel (D), 226,722 votes to 209,959, or 50.3% to 46.6%. There was no incumbent on the ballot that year. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) had given up the seat to run for Senate.

Bridget Brink is a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2022 to 2025 and resigned in April 2025 over the Trump administration's approach to Russia's war there. She has been endorsed by EMILYs List and by Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor and U.S. energy secretary.

Matt Maasdam spent 20 years in the Navy, including service as a SEAL and a stint as a military aide to President Barack Obama, and later founded two e-commerce businesses. His marquee endorsement comes from Slotkin, who held this seat before him and cut an ad on his behalf.

William Lawrence), raised in East Lansing, co-founded the Sunrise Movement and helped start the Michigan Rent Is Too Damn High Coalition. He is running well to the left of the field, calling for a moratorium on new data centers and describing Israel's war in Gaza as a genocide. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Our Revolution, and the Working Families Party have all backed him.

Two minor-party candidates are already on the November ballot: Shane Dedrick of the Green Party and Felix Thibodeau of the Working Class Party.

Ratings

All three major forecasters put this race in their most competitive category: Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Sabato's Crystal Ball have each rated Michigan's 7th a Toss-up continuously since spring 2025. Cook's Partisan Voter Index for the district is EVEN, meaning its presidential results have tracked the national average: Donald Trump carried it by roughly a point in 2024, while Barrett won by fewer than four. That is about as close to a genuine coin flip as the House map gets.

Prediction Markets

Traders are not treating it like a coin flip. On Polymarket, the Democratic contract in the general election market was trading at 68% and the Republican contract at 33% on $14,475 in total volume as of 1:00 p.m. ET, Friday, July 31, 2026. The two sides sum to 101%, which is normal in a live two-sided market where both contracts carry their own spread.

The Democratic primary market is currently where the real money is. Polymarket had Lawrence at 93%, Maasdam at 5.8%, and Brink at 3.8% as of the same time, on $115,810 in volume, roughly eight times what the general election market has drawn. Traders are betting far more confidently on who wins Tuesday than on what happens in November.

Experts vs. Markets

The forecasters say neither party has an edge. The market prices Democrats at better than two-to-one. Both readings can be defended: raters are assessing the district's structure, which is dead even, while traders appear to be pricing in the national environment that typically punishes the president's party in a midterm.

But there is a complication the two measures handle differently. NOTUS reported this week that Democratic strategists in Michigan and Washington fear Lawrence is about to win the nomination and that his politics are a poor fit for a swing district. Brink and Maasdam have spent the closing weeks attacking each other and splitting the same voters. If the general election market's 68% was set on the assumption of a centrist nominee, Tuesday could force a repricing that the ratings, which are already at Toss-up and have nowhere more competitive to go, would not register at all.

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